This is outrageous!
Screenwriter Dustin Lance Black was banned from speaking at Hope College in Michigan after the administration deemed him too “opinionated.”
The openly gay Black is in the area filming What’s Wrong with Virginia and was originally invited to take part in two separate events on campus including speaking to a screenwriting class and taking place in roundtable discussion about sexuality.
Both sound very beneficial to students and more than appropriate to us in a setting of higher education!
But the Dean of Students Richard Frost disagrees saying that “from past experience, strongly-opinionated speakers usually don├óΓé¼Γäót further academic discussions about gay, lesbian or transgender issues.”
That makes absolutely NO sense!
Students are understandably upset at their decision as Black, an ACADEMY AWARD-WINNING SCREENWRITER, would be an invaluable educational resource!
An angry student writes:
“Students on both sides of the homosexuality culture war are outraged that their college’s administration doesn’t think they’re mature enough to discuss important issues on campus respectfully, or even sanely. Doesn’t our school have a Communications department? And what kind of spineless nitwits do Hope’s donors want the college to produce? Homosexuality isn’t going away. The pissed-off and hurt students aren’t going away. The Administration is censoring academic discussion of one of the great social issues of our time. Sounds like the dark ages to me.”
The dark ages is right!
Hope College is affiliated with Reform Church of America, which in 2005 approved a recommendation “to immediately begin an honest and intentional denomination-wide dialogue on homosexuality.”
This blatant censorship certainly doesn’t sound like an “honest and intentional” dialogue to us!
More like NO dialogue at all!
[Image via WENN.]